Now that the Antennacraft FM6 is discontinued, what's my best bet for an antenna?

Looking to mount a bigass antenna on the roof. 90% interested in FM, 10% in HDTV reception. I have a coax distribution amp already. I'm trying to pick up a low-powered college station (WKNC) about 18 miles from my house. My Jeep can pick it up just fine in my driveway, but my tuners struggle with indoor wire antennas. There are also a couple of great stations out of greensboro I'd like to listen to... and would love to get something out of Charlotte on a good night.

Thoughts?

Charles.

Hi Charles. I live close to Charlotte and get stations way up in Monroe, see if you can get WDAV 88.9 :)
 
I've posted this before, but I do recommend the inexpensive Stellar Labs 4-ele Yagi. It works quite well. The size means it's beamwidth is pretty wide but the side nulls are also very deep so you can do some pretty fancy DXing via nulling out the unwanted signal and the one you want is still easily captured.

Without knowing your geography, I'd wager that just getting a simple directional antenna (such as this) out in the clear would capture signals in your system at least as well as or (probably much) better than your car.

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You may want to consider two antennas on one mount. Most OTA TV broadcasts have been moved into the old UHF band, which is well away from the frequency band of FM. Two dedicated antennas are going to give you a better response than one "do neither particularly well" antenna.

Even if TV isn't a concern ... you can see a Magnum omni sticking out over my FM6 ... both are coupled into a single downfeed to the stereo.

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That can drag the world in right nice, except it had trouble with a low watt college station about 25 miles out with a big metro full of interference between us. The FM6 is pointed right at their tower and gives me excellent reception.

Option B might be a rotor if you're in a fringe area.

* Probably helps that I've got an old school FM Magnum amplifier in line.

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Ain't nuttin' kin hide from that bad boy! ;-}
 
I had no luck with the Stellar labs circular omni-directional antenna. It was a waste of money for me. The four-element yagi from Stellar labs, on the other hand, works great.
 
For those of you with the Stellar 4 element, do you have it on a rotator or just positioned to optimize station pick up? If stationary, how does it work for station antennas it isn't pointed at?
 
For those of you with the Stellar 4 element, do you have it on a rotator or just positioned to optimize station pick up? If stationary, how does it work for station antennas it isn't pointed at?
These antennas are designed to reject FM signals in the direction THEY ARE NOT AIMED AT. If you don't want to use a rotor, you can erect 2 antennas pointing in opposite directions using a switch near your gear.
 
Thanks to this thread, I'm now about 34 bucks lighter. Just ordered that linked Stellar Labs antenna.

The antenna actually sucks, but everyone who has one didn't want to be the only suckers. <G>

I got my FM6 a couple years back, so I'm good for now, but be interesting to get your review once you get it mounted up. And ya, you will need a rotor if you're trying to pick up stations in disparate locations as any yagi type antenna is directional - the better they are, the tighter the reception footprint. Mine is fixed position, but ganged with an omni whip. The vertical omni gave me good stereo out to 100 miles on a good night, but still couldn't pick up that low watt college station I like from 20 miles away. Pointing the yagi right at their antenna gives me very nice stereo more times than not, including the HD Radio sub-carriers. Still get some bad nights, but that's the nature of the beast.

Anyway, make sure to post back with your results ... we're waiting! (tap tap tap) ;-}
 
Some general information.

A full sized purpose built antenna is will usually give the best performance whether it is a 3 element or 10 element antenna.

How much of an antenna will be needed will vary location to location. What works well for one person may not work all the well for someone else in a different location, even within the same town or sometimes even with in a few city blocks. It depends on how much signal is hitting the antenna.

I have read a number of positive reviews of the Stellar Labs antenna. It is a basic 4 element FM broadcast band antenna and it is not rocket science to get this correct. However the same caveat applies. I understand that this may not fit you definition of a big antenna and may not be enough gain for your particular situation.

To be clear, when you say that you all ready have a distributions system, does that mean that you also already have an over the air TV antenna? My take is that you do not, but that may not be correct.

Using an over the air TV antenna for the FM broadcast band can be hit and miss, trial and error. Not all over the air TV antennas are created equal when it comes to FM broadcast band reception. If a combination antenna is to be used, are all of your stations of interest in the same direction from your house? If not a rotor may be in your future.

Using an FM broadcast band only antenna for over the air TV reception can be an even bigger hit and miss situation.

Check you existing distribution amplifier to be sure that it does not have an FM broadcast band trap, if it does be sure that it is turned off. Not all do, but it is not unusual, and some may have unswitchable FM traps.

It all boils down to how much signal is in the air, from what directions, for the stations of interest right where the antenna is located.

Eickmewg beat me to the reference to the Stellar Labs antenna.
Are you JBL GUY? Say "location, location, location".
 
The antenna actually sucks, but everyone who has one didn't want to be the only suckers. <G>

I got my FM6 a couple years back, so I'm good for now, but be interesting to get your review once you get it mounted up. And ya, you will need a rotor if you're trying to pick up stations in disparate locations as any yagi type antenna is directional - the better they are, the tighter the reception footprint. Mine is fixed position, but ganged with an omni whip. The vertical omni gave me good stereo out to 100 miles on a good night, but still couldn't pick up that low watt college station I like from 20 miles away. Pointing the yagi right at their antenna gives me very nice stereo more times than not, including the HD Radio sub-carriers. Still get some bad nights, but that's the nature of the beast.

Anyway, make sure to post back with your results ... we're waiting! (tap tap tap) ;-}

Will certainly do, Skizo. Thanks for the tips.
 
Skizo, how did you route the two antennas into one feed? What components? Might be a good plan for me too. I do have a MD ST-2 on a different system and it works well, but I'd like to have a big gun also.
 
Nothing fancy ... a standard coax coupler works fine, and also provides a handy point to ground both the coax and mast assembly.

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No untoward effects, and as mentioned earlier, I see no significant degradation in reception on the omni. The yagi does exactly what it's supposed to as well.

Just to make things interesting, I also split the signal inside to two different receivers. That WILL drop the gain some, but that loss is more than compensated for by the Magnum FM amp. If you decide to go that route, a standard powered splitter may be just what you need. The Antennas Direct AM4262C will give you 22db gain which is adjustable to prevent overload. Available at a WallyWorld near you ...
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These antennas are designed to reject FM signals in the direction THEY ARE NOT AIMED AT. If you don't want to use a rotor, you can erect 2 antennas pointing in opposite directions using a switch near your gear.

If one had the space and the parts, it would be interesting to construct an omnidirectional antenna using four of them.
 
If one had the space and the parts, it would be interesting to construct an omnidirectional antenna using four of them.

This would yield a pattern closer to a 4 lobed cloverleaf pattern than an omnidirectional pattern. The shape of the lobes would depend on the particular antennas used.

Capture 500.JPG Capture 501.JPG

Each of the lobes could be aimed to favor particular stations. But if the antennas were fed with a common feed line with a 4 way combiner at the antennas, the real world loss in the combiner would be around 7 dB and would negate the gain of the antennas.

One can design and build a coaxial cable matching/phasing cable assembly to combine the signals from the 4 antennas with a much lower resultant insertion loss. Commercial two way radio antenna companies (DB Products, Andrews and others) do this for their multiple element omnidirectional antennas. One could run 4 separate feed lines to a 4 way switch to keep insertion losses low.

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Commercial professional antennas, while rather large and expensive (mostly way over the top for the average user), can give real world omnidirectional gains of 6 dB or more. It is likely that most would prefer using a directional antenna and a rotor, if needed.
 
I have a 20 year old Antennacraft FM6 that gets
54 stations after sinking ground rod deeply and aiming perfectly; the ground rod should stabilize the aim at Sears (Willis)
Tower. WFMT is 5 plus bars now and WDCB is 4.5 bars and very very deep stereo depth. However it was missing half the reflector and half the director. Using four wooden splints, a steel hanger, and multiple cable ties, we have restored the geometry at 20 feet above the ground!
 
I've had quite good luck with a single reflector quad. I'm in the middle of multiple broadcast areas, this beats my dipole handily, but gets weak on the low end of the band.

I can get the antenna about 12-15 off the ground, but roof is out till summer.

What happens if I combine multiple quads tuned to different freq? Say one at 91, one at 98. Can I use the same frame and reflectors or do they need to be misaligned?
 
Here is some addition information.

You can take look at your distribution amplifier and check for a switchable FM trap, most that have an FM trap are switchable.

Not all distribution amplifiers are created equal in terms of their performance for FM band reception. What is needed for good operation is not necessarily the same as for FM broadcast band reception for several reasons. Some distribution amplifiers have higher noise figures than one would want for weak signal FM broadcast reception. These amplifiers are very broad banded, can have very high levels of amplification and may supply your FM tuner or receiver with high levels of out of the FM broadcast band signals. This may or may not be an issue.

Best design practices indicates that the amplification should be placed at the antenna. That can improve the noise figure by several dB (that is noise generated in the antenna system that will be competing with your weak FM broadcast band signal). This is done by using an RF preamp at the antenna, and in the case of the FM broadcast band a low noise figure FM broadcast band preamp.

If you use a basic signal combiner at the antennas you will loose about half the signal (3dB) from each antenna.

CATV amplifiers work as designed because the cable company gives them a relatively large signal from the outside.

Having said the above, many people just plug and play and it works fine. Chances are, all though it is not certain, what you want to do will work fine.

To be clear I am not trying to discourage what you want to do. I am just sharing general information.

The Channelmaster Probe 9 was even better.

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